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Perhaps this is why we were concerned whether Iraq was in some way involved in 9-11

Iraq Says It Will 'Punish' Allies

By Sameer N. Yacoub
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2001; 3:17 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010621/aponline151711_000.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq warned that an alleged U.S.-British airstrike on a soccer field "will not go unpunished," the official Iraqi News Agency reported Thursday.

Iraq claimed that an allied airstrike Tuesday killed 23 people in Tall Afar, 275 miles northwest of Baghdad, but Washington said if there were deaths, they were likely caused by Iraq's own "misdirected ground fire."

"Iraqis will not be terrorized by such criminal acts," Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Douri, told the agency.

U.S. and British defense officials said a mission was flown over Iraq's no-fly zone Tuesday, but denied warplanes fired on any positions.

The Pentagon said Iraqi forces had fired several surface-to-air missiles at allied planes and it appeared that part of at least one of the Iraqi missiles malfunctioned and landed on the soccer field.

"How do the U.S. officials know the missile malfunctioned?" an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, asked The Associated Press. "Do they have representatives working with our anti-aircraft missiles units?"

Lauren Cannon, the leader of visiting American and British activists currently visiting Iraq, said the group will travel to Tall Afar "to see for ourselves who was behind the deaths."

The newspaper of Iraq's ruling Baath party, Al-Thawra, accused the U.N. Security Council on Thursday of "turning a blind eye to U.S. and British aggression because it is dominated by the United States."

The Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"This new aggression is more proof of America's political and moral bankruptcy," the paper said in an editorial.

Allied aircraft patrol zones over southern and northern Iraq, which were established after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslims rebels in the south and Kurds in the north. British and American jets enforcing the northern zone are based in Turkey.

Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has challenged allied aircraft since December 1998.

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